1919 (1984)

September 24, 1986

SCREEN: MEMORIES OF FREUD IN 'NINETEEN NINETEEN'

By NINA DARNTON

Published: September 24, 1986

''NINETEEN NINETEEN,'' which opens today at the Film Forum 1, is an ambitious and fascinating film about Sophie Rubin and Alexander Scherbatov, supposedly the last surviving patients of Sigmund Freud. Hugh Brody, who is the film's director and co-writer, and Michael Ignatieff created characters based on two of Freud's case histories, invented names for them and set them in Vienna in 1970.

Sophie, a Viennese Jew living in New York, flies back to Vienna to find Alexander, a White Russian aristocrat whom she has seen in a television interview discussing his analysis. Together in his heavily textured Eastern European apartment filled with relics of another era, they relive their pasts. They discuss their personal lives, the cataclysmic world history that intruded into their psyches, and the famous psychoanalyst in whose office at 19 Berggasse they sought peace - or perhaps happiness - or maybe merely understanding.

These are two solitary people, played with remarkable sensitivity and depth by Maria Schell and Paul Scofield, caught in webs of unhappiness they are incapable of severing. They were analyzed by Freud, whom the film treats visually as other movies deal with Jesus. We never see his face. We only hear his voice speaking to his patients.

Sophie's great and only love was Anna, another woman. Alexander was incapable of feeling sexual desire for the only woman he ever loved and was attracted only to vulgar women he despised. Sophie ran away from Anna (and from her analysis) and moved to New York, thereby escaping the Holocaust in which her family perished. Alexander married the woman he loved and suffered through 20 years of self-hatred because he never desired her. Both remained emotionally crippled, lonely people. Did Freud help them or hurt them? And beyond that, was their unhappiness really the result of their personal histories, or were they also victims of the shattering historical period in which they lived - the Russian Revolution, two World Wars, anti-Semitism, Marxism, Fascism?

These are profound questions, difficult for psychology and philosophy to answer, and problematic for a film even to ask. But Mr. Brody has evolved a distinctive style with which to address them. With a technique that relies partly on flashbacks and partly on documentary footage he creates a montage of impressions, using the camera to capture the very process of unlocking the unconscious.

Mr. Brody seems to have found a cinematic language for the process of thought and memory. He shifts from color to black and white, as people often do in dreams. By inserting documentary footage, he suggests the intrusion of historical reality into the personal world. ''He didn't cure me,'' Alexander says to Sophie. ''Cure you of what?'' she answers. ''Of the Russian Revolution? Of life?''

Paul Scofield and Maria Schell give brilliant, finely tuned performances. Mr. Scofield's character is as detailed, as painstakingly woven as the intricate Oriental carpets and heavy brocades in Freud's office.

Maria Schell is, quite simply, wonderful - a pleasure to watch. She is still beautiful, with searching sad eyes and the kind of warmth and wisdom that Simone Signoret often projected. Her intelligence, her regret, her need to find the forces which shaped her and her compassion are beautifully drawn.

This film is not for everyone. But for those interested in the questions it poses and in a cumulative, but ultimately powerful use of film as a medium to touch the mind as well as the heart, it is well worth the trip.
DAYS ON THE COUCH - NINETEEN NINETEEN, directed by Hugh

Brody; written by Mr. Brody and Michael Ignatieff; photographed by Ivan Strasburg; produced by the British Film Institute in association with Channel 4; distributed by Spectrafilm. At Film Forum 1, 57 Watts Street. Running time: 99 minutes.

This film has no rating. Alexander Scherbatov...Paul Scofield; Sophie Rubin...Maria Schell; The voice of Sigmund Freud...Frank Finlay; Anna...Diana Quick; Young Sophie...Clare Higgins; Young Alexander...Colin Firth.